Social Marketing or Marketing on Social Networks?
Does your company practice social media marketing, or do you use social networks for marketing? There is a difference. The first – social media marketing – requires a strategy specific to social channels, and content tailored to those platforms. The second – marketing on social networks – is simply distributing traditional marketing messages through social media. Social media marketing works. Marketing on social networks doesn’t. Social media marketing is a true two-way conversation between a company and its customers, prospective customers, and the world at large. Marketing through social networks “pushes” company offerings to anyone who can hear them. This includes tactics Read More
Five Rules of Content Marketing
Content marketing works. That simple premise is why more and more marketers are making content marketing a core part of their lead generation strategies. One of the reasons that they work is that providing high-quality content helps build trust and rapport with prospects and customers, making it easier for them to make an eventual purchasing or renewal decision. It’s not a new idea. Early in my career, I worked at Shell Oil Company in Houston, where the “Come to Shell for Answers” booklets were a primary part of our marketing communications budget. Back then, we called it thought leadership marketing, Read More
SEO Fairy Tales Without Happy Endings
We share office space with Vertical Nerve, a web analytics, search marketing, and mobile marketing company. In other words, they’re Google Analytics geeks, who understand exactly how to measure, monitor and tweak marketing campaigns to get the results you want. I’m not, even though I’ve known about Google longer than most people on the planet. Months before Sergei Brinn and Larry Page announced their new search engine, I attended a hush-hush meeting (after signing “binding mutual non-disclosure agreements and information embargoes” explained with great seriousness by two teams of lawyers), and saw one of the very first demos of the product that Read More
Facebook Timeline Steps to Take Now
It’s been about a month since Facebook implemented the new Timeline layout for business pages. When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s new page design was first announced, the reaction was less than positive. Like it or not, there are some features in the new layout that can make a big difference in how user-friendly business pages are for both the page manager and customers or prospects who “Like” the page. Here are some basic steps every marketer needs to take now to catch up with the new Facebook Timeline. I’ll admit that when Timeline first came out, I was among the Read More
Pinning Email to Pinterest for Faster ROI
Pinterest is the fastest growing social media site, far outstripping other recent entries into the social media sweepstakes. But Pinterest isn’t for everyone. People either love it or hate it. Forbes blogger David Coursey called it “Facebook with training wheels” in a recent article in which he said that Facebook’s purchase of Instagram would kill Pinterest. The same day, CNBC aired a story titled “Why Pine for the Pinterest Customer? They’re Worth More.” Here are three of the comments that business owners or marketers made during the CNBC segment: “Customers who come to (our) website from Pinterest have a 70 percent larger ticket Read More
Using Case Studies to Make Your Sales Point
Satisfied, happy customers extolling the virtues of a product or service after they’ve tried it and gotten the results they wanted. It’s the one sales and marketing message that never goes out of date, and never gets old. Finding customers willing to do that isn’t always easy, which is why using case studies isn’t first on every marketer’s to do list, every day. Some of our largest clients consider our products to be part of their “secret sauce” and won’t let us name them. Yet one of the key selling points we make in every sales presentation is based around proven, Read More
How to Sell Marketing Automation to the Boss
A few weeks ago, I attended a luncheon where Danesh De Silva, Vice President of Marketing at Orametrix, presented a great case study on how he had used marketing automation technology to transform his company’s marketing operations and the ROI he’s gotten. When Dan was finished with his story, one of the people at my table shook his head sadly. “He’s so right. I know that I could do great things if I just had the right tools. But how do I ‘sell’ marketing automation to my boss?” It’s a common question. A marketing director or even vice president of marketing becomes convinced Read More
5 Minutes to Writing Better Marketing Emails
If you’re like me, you’re so busy doing your job that you barely have time to get it all done. So where do you find the time to improve your skills, and pick up on the latest research that can help you improve results? Here’s a formula that will help you write emails that get better results. You can read and implement it in five minutes – I promise. And it really does work. Follow the rules The three rules to improving email marketing results are simple. Design your email to look like a “quick read”. If they have to scroll down Read More
Do You See What I See? On Google, Probably Not
If you and I use Google to search for the same keyword, do you see what I see? Probably not. I’m in Dallas, Texas, so the first thing that Google does is to look at my IP address, which tells it where I am. If you’re anywhere else – even in a Dallas suburb – Google will automatically adjust the search results according to location. Users get no say as to whether or not we want “local” results (and ads). Search history factors in, too. Google results are based on assumptions that are supposed to help make the results more relevant Read More
5 PR Pitch Mistakes to Avoid
Around Christmas time, I helped a friend who is a columnist for a well-known national magazine cull through a large volume of pitches he was getting from a request for information that he’d posted on HARO (Peter Shankman’s great Help a Reporter Out service that matches sources with writers looking for experts). It’s possible that the task of culling through HARO looking for media opportunities the week before Christmas fell to the most junior staffer in the shop. But don’t they teach the basics of PR pitching in college anymore? I work with an undergraduate marketing intern who knows better Read More
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